What is LinkedIn’s Game Plan Now?

By Phillip Marquart

What is next for LinkedIn? The professional-social networking site has gone public, and while their stock price flutters, the question is exactly what the game plan is for LinkedIn now that they have stockholders they must answer to and growth numbers they must meet. Surely going public changes the landscape.

Make no doubt about it, currently LinkedIn is one of the, if not the, most important tools to have in your recruitment marketing arsenal. Right now, having recruiter access (meaning basically unlimited access to search and contact  sites users) to LinkedIn is a HUGE tool for a recruiter because you have access to the 100+ million LinkedIn users. But if I was forced to put all my eggs for the next five years into LinkedIn’s proverbial basket, I am not sure I would. I am not yet convinced that LinkedIn’s future is more Facebook, and less like the failed social networking site MySpace.

The main reason I fear for LinkedIn’s future is that too much of their value rests on users reading internal messages called InMail. Right now these internal messages are the main form of communication from recruiter to job seeker/candidate. Sitting through a sales call a few months back with one of LinkedIn’s senior sales folks, they definitely hammered this home as THE way to communicate; however, he danced around the question of ‘what happens when users block communication?’ Sure, presently very few users block InMails, but think back to when Farmville first came to Facebook. Remember? When that game first arrived, my Facebook feed became a dumping ground for requests to help friends find chickens, grow crops, and buy tractors. I didn’t play the game, but my friends on Facebook could easily spam me these requests to help themselves earn points.  It wasn’t until then that I learned how to block communications from Facebook applications. Eventually, as more and more companies recruit via LinkedIn and recruiters use those InMails recklessly, they are going to be seen by an increasing number of job seekers as little more than a request for Farmville, forcing users to learn how to block InMail. Less and less of the InMails will be read, and InMail becomes quickly less relevant.

Plus, there will be the constant threat of competition now that LinkedIn is making money. Right now LinkedIn is lonely in the professional networking/social networking world. How long will that last? How long until Facebook makes a play? Or Google? Or both? Or a site we haven’t heard of yet? LinkedIn charges, in my opinion, an absurd amount for their ‘recruiter access’ and they are not flexible in creating packages that work for RPOs. They charge these prices because they can. Simply put, they have a tool no one else offers and recruiters need. Right now, they can overcome their steep prices and inflexible options because they are the only player in the market. Does this change when a competitor starts stealing their market share?

So where does LinkedIn go from here? How can they cement their place in the social networking landscape while maintaining a growing revenue stream to keep Wall St. happy? Since recruiters and HR professionals are going to be where they make their money, I would do everything in my power to keep LinkedIn as a relevant tool to them. I believe you have to regulate, monitor and limit actions on the site to keep InMails and recruiter-to-candidate communications from becoming spam.  I fear that with the pressures that come with being a publicly traded company, that LinkedIn will become less and less relevant; however, I could definitely be wrong. This post could easily be thrown in my face in five years as I apply for a promotion or new opportunity by some hiring manager asking me “you call yourself a recruitment marketing expert, yet you thought LinkedIn wasn’t going to be relevant in five years?”

This begs the question, what do YOU think? Where do you see LinkedIn going? Do you see them as the most useful tool currently? Do you see them remaining as one of the most important recruitment tools over the next 5 years?


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